


Adulthood 101

by Ardatli



Series: Profs!AU [3]
Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, M/M, Prequel, Profs!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-07
Updated: 2013-07-07
Packaged: 2017-12-18 01:18:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/874033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ardatli/pseuds/Ardatli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Billy and Nate have been best friends all through high school. Now that they’ve made it to college, things have started to change... </p><p>Aka, I started to write a quick gift thing for SmileDesu, and it got a little out of hand. </p><p>Part of Profs!AU, but no background is necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adulthood 101

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SmileDesu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SmileDesu/gifts).



> So I feel guilty about my only contribution to the Nate/Billy rare pairing being the gasping death of their relationship in my university AU. On the other hand, I’m physically incapable of writing a Nate/Billy fic that in any way disrupts the perfection of Billy/Teddy. So have my apologies in the form of a prequel to Profs!AU. 
> 
> This started as a PWP and became more P than PW, but so it goes.
> 
> Posting unbetaed, because I refuse to admit this is anything more than a quick tumblr drabble on growth hormone.
> 
> Come play with me [on Tumblr!](http://ardatli.tumblr.com)

Billy hadn’t noticed the time passing until he heard the door open.

‘Back in an hour,’ Nate had said, before heading out with his book list in his back pocket. It should have been plenty of time; just, pick four courses that weren’t at the same time, fill in the form, and he’d have the afternoon to get the rest of the campus tour and find something to eat and maybe even ~~finish~~ start unpacking. But the form was just as blank as it had been when Nate had beaned him on the head with a hacky-sack and let the flimsy wooden door creak shut behind him.

It was one thing to think about college, to work to get in, to get here... and then to have absolutely no idea what to do with any of it. The course calendar lay splayed open beside him and it might as well have been written in ancient Greek, course codes and schedules and degree requirements marching down the pages in orderly lines that spelled out DOOM.  A language, a math, but not these six, add three credits to qualify for that, but if you don’t take _this_ then you’ll never get that one class you need to graduate in _four_ years instead of five...

Billy flopped forward with a groan, papers crackling underneath him as he sprawled out on the dark blue bedspread that still smelled like lemon detergent, cedar chest and _home_.

It would take more than a day for everything he owned to take on the vaguely goat-like smell of the guys’ dorm.

Hopefully.

Something thumped on the floor, a heavy weight with the crinkle of plastic. He cracked an eye open, caught sight of Nate’s lean back, his shoulders flexing as he stripped off his sweaty shirt and flung it toward the basket in the corner. Billy pushed the rush back down into denial-town where it belonged, closed his eyes again and turned his head away.

The year apart was supposed to have fixed this, made it irrelevant, put Nate back into the box of ‘dude who dared me to eat crickets’ that he’d been in since eighth grade. He’d gone off to Princeton while Billy had gotten his life back under control, made up for the year of high school he’d blown off with his little existential crisis. But here they were, and there Nate was, and Billy was going to have to keep his hormones and perpetual singleness under wraps if he wasn’t going to screw _this_ up along with everything else.

The bed sagged under extra weight, the cheap metal springs creaking alarmingly. Billy rolled over onto his back and made a face at Nate.

“How’s it going?” Nate asked easily, settling a clean t-shirt down around his hips. He poked Billy in the side with a couple of fingers, pushing him over until he rolled off the crumpled and still-blank papers. “What’ve you been doing this whole time? Sitting around jerking off?” Nate’s voice was light, but that stupid little frown-crease started to appear up between his eyebrows. Danger, danger, Bill Kaplan.

“Might as well,” Billy grumbled. It was too much, becoming the focus of Nate’s ice-blue scrutiny, and he flung an arm over his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see it anymore. The course calendar lay open on the first-year introduction, mocking him. The familiar grey wash started to filter in around the corners, his heart sinking low into his gut. “This was a bad idea,” he sighed, his voice muffled by his sleeve. “Even if I pick classes, they’ll be the wrong ones. I don’t know what I want to do for the rest of my life; I can barely decide what I want for _dinner_.”

“Chili dogs,” Nate pushed his hip over and settled back against the wall, the familiar heat and weight of him pressing against Billy’s side a comforting and not-comforting thing at the same time. “It’s Monday, and you want to avoid the chicken kiev. I think it’s radioactive.”

Billy struggled to prop himself up on his elbows, the grin pulling at one corner of his mouth. “Radioactive, you say?”

“Oh sure,” Nate scoffed. “That’s what gets your attention. Bitten by radioactive poultry, he stalks the night.”

“Fighting for justice, he is-“ Billy crowed, “ _Chicken-Man_.”

Nate planted a hand in the middle of his chest and shoved him gently. Billy ignored the way his heart picked up speed and let himself fall back. “You are such a nerd,” Nate scoffed, his hand resting on Billy for a beat longer before he pulled it back, leaned casually against the wall like this was his bed, on his side of the tiny little industrial-white room. The frown-line was back, despite the joking, and Billy fought the urge to smooth it down with his thumb.  

“Says the guy taking third-year system logic classes. Pot, kettle,” Billy deflected, then sighed. The silence stretched between them longer than it should have. It was the wrong kind of quiet, an expectant thing, not the easy just-being-there that they fell into sometimes, sprawled in Nate’s bedroom doing homework, or taking over the couch in Billy’s living room, the bowl of popcorn settled easily between them.

But all of that had been Before. Before Billy’s eighteenth birthday and the adoption registry. Before finding Tommy, going looking for their mother. Before melting down and losing a year to the mind-numbing terror that had come with his world turning upside down.

And, apparently, a hefty dose of family history of mental illness.

“I have no idea what I’m doing here,” Billy said finally. He raked his hands back through his hair and stared at the ceiling.

“College,” Nate reminded him dryly. “That was the general idea. Are you having a crisis?”

“Only a little one.” Billy held up two fingers and pinched them together, squishing the image of Nate’s head in between. Nate snorted and Billy let his arm fall back to the bed, weighted and heavy. “I’m not going to make it, Nate. The only reason I even got _in_ here was because my dad’s an alum and I’m supposed to carry on the ‘family legacy.’ My GPA-“

“Took an understandable dip because of life circumstances that they already accounted for, and last year was good,” Nate broke in, his jaw set firm. “And your essays were great.”

“Because you wrote them.”

“I _edited._ It’s different.”

“It’s really not.” Billy pushed back against the bed, palms flat against the warm rumpled mess that his bedding had become. He hauled himself upright to sit back against the wall, hugging his knee. His shoulder knocked into Nate’s as he slumped back, and Nate bumped him lightly with his elbow in return. This was easy, familiar, safe. Outside, though-

He heard shouts and catcalls through the open window, the beeps of trucks and moving vans, Princeton’s campus filling up with actual smart people. People who belonged here. People who weren’t going to flame out spectacularly by the end of first semester.

People like Nate.

 _He’d_ made it in all on his own on sheer brilliance and willpower, was back on scholarship despite the amount of energy he’d put into taking care of Billy at the same time; the phone calls, the visits home on weekends to ride herd on Billy while he struggled to salvage the wreck of his senior year. And now – rooming together, talking him down from his latest panic, and all for what? The amazing privilege of having Billy be a ball of mope all over the dorm.

“Why are you doing all this?” he asked, finally, the words ash in his mouth. Nate smelled like summer and sunshine sitting next to him, with the faint spice of his hair gel and the tang of sweat and salt.

 Nate frowned at him, a thousand little gears turning in behind his eyes like he was trying to figure out the next six moves in the conversation before he spoke again. “Because I want you here,” he said simply. “Is that so bad?” He listed over slightly, like he wanted to lean in, then pulled himself upright again. His frown flickered but the intensity of his look didn’t change, and Billy was the target of that laser-like focus, everything in the world falling away except for his eyes.

Then it was gone, Nate shrugged and flashed a tight smile, resting his arms on his knees. “Last year sucked without you. I ended up skipping out on most of frosh week because I had no-one to mock the meatheads with. That and my phone bill practically bankrupted my folks. Living with you will be cheaper.” That part at least was a lie, and Billy laughed. Nate stiffened for a minute, then relaxed again, elbowed him. “So you do remember what jokes are.”

“Your face is a joke,” Billy replied out of sheer reflex, the last knots in his shoulders untangling.

“Your face is a _punchline_.”  

And that called for a jab to the ribs with a couple of fingers, which meant Nate was obliged to whack him in the head with his pillow, which led to a wrestling match that ended when Billy fell off the edge of the bed, limbs wild.  

When the dust settled, Billy was sprawled on the floor where he’d landed, his shoulders resting against the bed, still shaking with easy laughter. Nate had him pinned down, his knees on Billy’s legs and his hands on his shoulders, pushing him back against the bed-frame until Billy managed to stop laughing long enough to cry uncle. “Fine, I give. You win! Victory is yours.”

All things considered, Nate should have taken his victory, rolled off Billy when he flexed his shoulders under Nate’s hands, gone back to unpacking his textbooks and forgotten all about it.

All things considered, Billy shouldn’t have been surprised that he didn’t.

Billy pushed forward, and instead of moving, letting space build back between them, Nate pressed back. His fingers dug into Billy’s shoulders, his knees pressed down on Billy’s thighs. He was so close, hovering right above, the late summer heat building between them in the stillness.

A curl of dark hair had fallen forward onto Nate’s forehead, and with that and his eyes, and the new breadth in his shoulders that Billy had been absolutely refusing to acknowledge – any hope that he might have been able to indulge in a guilt and association-free Superman fantasy was entirely gone.

“Why?” Billy asked again, barely inches between their mouths. Nate didn’t move, barely breathed, like too loud a sound would shatter the bubble that surrounded them. He anchored Billy, pressed him down, held him to the ground and kept him from flying to pieces. He always had. When everything was slipping sideways, when his own name had become a lie and a cheat and a fraud- Nate had been his rock, confident and strong, pushing him to do, think, _be_ better. He had been the foundation Billy could rebuild on. “I’ll just drag you down with me again.”

“No,” Nate replied, firm and sure, in a tone more like an order than an answer. “You won’t.” He softened, then, his voice a murmur and his attention never drifting, solidifying in Billy’s chest and pulling him in. “I’d do anything for you, you know that. But it’s not just that.”

 He looked into Billy’s eyes and the careful control was gone, something dark and tender and vulnerable flashing there. “I need you with me,” Nate confessed softly, his lashes dark against the cut of his cheekbone.  “We’re better together. I don’t want to do this alone.”

Nate’s eyes had dropped to Billy’s mouth, to the spot where Billy’s lower lip had curled in, where he caught it with his teeth. His fingers flexed again, and he still wasn’t pulling back, or leaning in, and this thing, this _something new and maybe good_ was thrumming between them.

He didn’t know where to look, what to do with his hands, how to cope with the creeping awareness that he was half-hard just from the contact, touch-starved and greedy. Nate’s breathing was shallower and faster, his pupils wide and liquid-dark, and if Billy dared, if he looked down the lines of their bodies, joined only by four pressure points that sang with heat and strength and need- would he see the same reaction there?  

_He’s your best friend. If you do this, you’ll lose him too._

“You won’t,” Nate repeated, somehow knowing, and then he was leaning in and kissing Billy. His lips were soft, dry, cautious and tender, moving gently over Billy’s mouth for a handful of seconds before the panic faded.

He tensed, started to pull back, and Billy made a needy noise, low in his throat. He opened his mouth to Nate, leaned forward as much as he could with Nate’s hands still pressing him back, traced his tongue along Nate’s bottom lip. If he’d already screwed this up, at least he’d know what Nate tasted like, would have something real to pin to his fantasies. His hands – what was he doing with his hands? He settled them on Nate’s waist, for lack of a better option, found his thumbs resting above the low-slung shorts, just over the jut of his hipbones.

Nate’s hands flew up to tangle in Billy’s hair and he deepened the kiss, the wet, slick sweetness of his mouth something Billy had never anticipated, never imagined, not like _this_. He could imagine how it would feel, sucking marks into his skin, or wrapped hot around his dick. That last image was all he needed; he was achingly hard, pressed tight and uncomfortable up against the zipper of his jeans.  

“Wait,” Billy gasped softly, breaking free from Nate’s mouth. Nate’s lower lip was wet, gleaming in the light, and all he wanted was to pull Nate’s hips in snug against him, thrust up into the heat of his body, kiss and suck on his lip again until it all made sense. But he had to stop, just to try. “You're the best thing in my life right now,” he heard himself beg, his own voice distant over the rushing of blood in his ears. “I don't wanna screw this up.”

Nate slid down on Billy’s thighs, fit their bodies together with what Billy imagined should have been an audible click, so perfect, to tight, Nate so hard against his thigh and then his stomach, a promising ridge of heat. “That’s not going to happen,” he promised, sliding his hands up to cup Billy’s face and kiss him again.

“How do you know that?” Billy pressed. It was getting harder to think. Harder. Heh. His hips hitched up without conscious thought, the fabric dragging down along his cock. It stung, added to the ache in his belly rather than soothing it.

“It's you.” Nate seemed to know, seemed to be reading his mind, because he ground his hips down and thrust against Billy’s stomach, cock stroking against Billy’s, and even through the layers of fabric it felt too good to stop.

Without clothes between them it would feel a whole lot better, and Billy fumbled with the button of his jeans, the waistband of Nate’s shorts. Nate lifted his hips to help, forehead pressed tightly against Billy’s and his breath coming in tight gasps. Skin was _amazing_ , even just chest to chest and their erections pressing against each other, shirts shoved out of the way. Nate wrapped his hand around Billy’s dick, the calluses on his fingers dry and rough and just this side of too good as he gave a tentative stroke. He wrung a groan out of Billy, a sound that started down at the root of his cock and burst, ragged, from his throat.

They’d seen each other naked or mostly so a million times before, at sleepovers and in gym class, times when Billy’d never thought to look and the past year when he’d had to stop himself. But it had never been like this; never with Nate’s shirt pushed up to expose his chest, the sparse dark hair arrowing down toward the waistband of his shorts; his cock hard and flushed red, arcing up toward his belly.

He wanted to get his hand on it, his mouth, taste him and smell him and – and Nate showed no signs of being interested in moving, his hand moving faster now. He ran the pad of his thumb across the head, smearing pre-come down the shaft to ease the slide. It was all Billy could do to hang on, match his speed.

It was a different angle than he was used to, Nate’s dick an amazing weight in his hand, all hot and silk-smooth. He was cut, same as Billy, so that was familiar, but he thrust up into Billy’s hand faster and sharper than Billy usually liked it.

Nate licked his hand and closed it around the head of Billy’s dick, and the tight wet slide was so, so good. His balls drew up close and pleasure coiled so tight in the small of his back that it was painful. “Nate, please, gonna-“

And then he was gone, shooting hot and sticky over Nate’s hand, his own chest, his shirt. Nate cried out, bit down into the join of Billy’s shoulder and throat, and then he was pulsing over Billy’s hand. His whole body shuddered with it and Billy stroked him gently as he came down, his own brain filled with brilliant white noise.

He rebooted eventually, Nate still sprawled in his lap with his hand between them, their bodies steadily drying together. Billy’s face was damp with sweat, a faint trickle running down between his shoulderblades. Nate’s jawline was right there, smooth and strong, and he wanted to press a kiss into it. But what if he’d misunderstood? What if this was just a one-time thing, a mistake or an impulse? Nate liked girls, he’d had dates (not many, but some), talked about how good it had felt to kiss one-

Billy moved his hands, slid them up along Nate’s thighs to rest at his hips again, waited until Nate stirred. “So,” he tried, his voice cracking as his heart rate slowed. “Since when are you into guys?” he tried not to make it sound like betrayal; but you’d think this was the kind of thing a guy would tell his best friend, considering.

Nate shrugged and sat up. His pupils were still wide, his hair a disaster, his lip red from Billy’s mouth and teeth. He looked wrecked, and – not sheepish, never that. But maybe a little embarrassed. “I still like girls. And some guys. But mostly I think I’m just into _you_ ,” he offered, and that- yeah. Billy hadn’t expected that.   

His face was right there, and his lips were lush, red and wanting. Billy kissed him again, ran his hand up Nate’s back to feel the muscles move and bunch, forgetting that he was sticky and gross with their sweat and come. At least until Nate flinched away from his hand and made a face.

“We need showers,” Nate peeled himself off and up, tucked his soft cock back into his shorts, and glared at his sticky hand with annoyance. And was this the part where things would get awkward? He looked for awkward but couldn’t find it, just the happy back-brain buzz from his post-orgasm high, and amazement at this freedom to look, to look and watch and not worry about  being caught. Because it was okay; because Nate wanted him too, and they were going to be together and they were going to be fine.

Nate braced his hands on the bed and leaned in again, kissed him with a little bit of tongue. He cupped his hand along Billy’s jaw and scraped a nail against the two-day stubble he had going on, then scratched it with his nails. Billy leaned into the touch, and he kind of wished he could purr, just for a moment.

“You’re going to shave this off, right?” Nate half-asked, half-ordered, and Billy grinned at the imperious tone creeping in around the edges. “You’re going to give me beard-burn.”

Hell, he’d take beard-burn, since that apparently meant they were going to get to do this again. Among other things. His dick stirred half-heartedly at the thought, and Billy tucked himself away and zipped up. “Are you always going to be this bossy?” he countered, lazing back against the bed.

Nate paused in the middle of wiping his hands off with the wet-naps that had been in yesterday’s takeout bag, and his cheeks colored. He cocked his head and looked at Billy, a smile playing over his lips. “Probably.”

And oh, _those_ images were really good too.

“Cool.” And it... was, when he considered it. It would be good to let him take charge, just for a while; to be able to let go of this and have one less thing to fret about, one less thing to worry about, because Nate had apparently planned some of this, had been planning it for a while. It would be one thing that Billy couldn’t mess up, just by virtue of being himself.

Billy lolled back against the bed, stretched his arms out high, then wide, felt all the muscles there shift, deliciously warm and loose. The beds shifted sideways; they weren’t attached to the floor. That was a thought; they could push them together, maybe. Make one reasonable-sized almost-double out of the two tiny cots.  

The course calendar slid off the bedspread and hit him in the knee. “Ow.”

Nate snickered. “Serves you right.”

“I have to do this now, don’t I?” Billy groaned. “Any more stalling techniques you want to show me?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows, but Nate just shook his head in feigned exasperation.

“Try looking at the arts section,” Nate suggested, grabbing his toiletry bag, his raised eyebrow punctuation to the request. “You write better than you think you do, and the History major is supposed to be easy.” He slung his towel over his shoulder, and he was beautiful standing there by his bed, the afternoon sun catching him just so.

Nate paused by the door, glanced back over his shoulder with that look that meant he’d just had an idea. “You never know; if all else fails,” he suggested, pleased with himself, opening the door onto the noise and chaos of the dorm hall on move-in day, “you can always teach.” 


End file.
